5 Inexpensive Ways to Bring Holiday Spirit to Your Apartment
By Sarah Kaufman
Just because you live in a small space doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice holiday cheer! Check out these simple ways to decorate for the holidays that won’t cost you an arm and a leg.
Cookies and baked goods
Bring the seasonal, welcoming scents of holiday treats into your home by baking a few different holiday staples, like gingerbread cookies, sugar cookies with sprinkles, and pumpkin pie or bread. If you don’t consider yourself to be the next Martha Stewart, opt for a holiday candle instead. They can cost as low as 10 bucks, and they come in all different holiday scents, allowing your home to smell like a Christmas tree, sugar cookie or snowy day in no time!
Tea-light candles
Tea-light candles are extremely inexpensive, easy to find and add a nice festive touch to any home. For a fun and easy DIY project, take a rectangular tray or plate and place three or four tea-light candles on top. Fill the empty space with fresh cranberries and voila! You have a festive centerpiece for a coffee table or a fun decoration for a shelf or mantle.
Hand-painted ornaments
This super cheap and fun-to-make project (disguised in a fancy and complicated-sounding name) gives decorating your Christmas tree a personal touch. Head to your local craft store, and you’ll be able to find hollow, glass, round ornaments. Buy a few colors of glass paint, and hand-paint fun designs on the ornaments. If you don’t have a tree, you can hang them on the wall for DIY wall décor. Plus, making holiday crafts is also a fun activity to do with other people — invite some friends over, pop open a bottle of wine and get your creativity on.
Holiday card display
As your family and friends send you holiday cards throughout the season, hang them on your refrigerator or display them on a mantle or shelf. Not only is it completely free, but it also adds a fun family touch when it comes to sprucing up your home for the holidays.
Discount stores
The moment you step foot into your local dollar store, you’ll know why this is the perfect go-to spot for budget-friendly holiday décor. Dollar stores often carry all sorts of inexpensive holiday decorations, from ornaments, to cookie tins, to window and door décor, and more. Buy a few $1 holiday tins to store the cookies from No. 1. Holiday lights are often no more than $10 per package — string them around your apartment or outside if you have a balcony or patio.
Sarah Kaufman is the editor-in-chief of The Manilla Folder at Manilla.com, the leading free and secure service that helps consumers simplify and organize all of their bills and household accounts in one place online or via the 4-plus-star customer-rated mobile apps. Sarah is also a regular contributor to Yahoo! Finance, Good Housekeeping, Woman’s Day, Redbook, The Motley Fool and other sites.
